Lost in a Broken System
Why Detainees Spend Years in Hinds Jails Without Trial by Kayode Crown
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Sept. 13, 2021, after appointing Harrison. But the 16-month stay would not be the first time Mosley would spend extended time in jail without a trial. On May 22, 2019, court documents signed by Hinds County Circuit Court Senior Judge Tomie Green showed that Mosley, at that time, had been held for six months without trial. The charge was for assaulting Hinds County Deputy Sheriff Johnny Ransome
an order for Mosley’s arrest six days later on Dec. 18, 2019. Court documents show that officials reduced the charge against Mosley to a misdemeanor in September 2020, sentenced him to six months in prison and released him on time served. But he remained in jail for the murders he allegedly committed on Jan. 26, 2020, after his arrest three days later. He allegedly killed Djuana Robinson and Michael Lawson at kayode crown
September 1 - 28, 2021 • jfp.ms
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he last attorney who worked with Justin Mosley, 21, before he was found hanging in his Hinds County Detention Center cell in Raymond was Malcolm O. Harrison. Hinds County Circuit Judge Eleanor Faye Peterson appointed Harrison as Mosley’s defense attorney on Feb. 9, 2021, after the public defender withdrew, citing conflict of interest. That attorney, Michael Henry, said that a witness in the two-count alleged murder charge against Mosley was once his client. When Mosley died in detention on Sunday, April 18, 2021, one month before his 22nd birthday on May 18, he had been in custody for 16 months. Harrison told the Jackson Free Press that Mosley did not indicate suicidal tendencies the various times he spoke with him. “I met with him three or four times during the time period that I represented him,” Harrison said in an Aug. 20 phone interview. “Between my time with him and his unfortunate demise, I never saw—I’m not a medical doctor—but I never saw signs of hopelessness. I never saw signs of, you know, of suicide. And I didn’t see that. I was as surprised as anybody (by his death),” Harrison added. “(His mother, Chalonda Mosley) was very involved in calling my office, and she had unique insight obviously into Justin Mosley. She told me on several occasions what his medical diagnosis was, what his issues were and how best to deal with it. Again, I just never saw any of that.” Harrison declined to share what the reported medical diagnosis was. The attorney provided an email address and a phone number for Chalonda Mosley, but she has not responded to emails or phone calls. Mosley’s indictment for murder in July 2020 came after he had already spent more than six months in jail. By the time he died in April, the accused had spent 16 months in incarceration, and his trial had not even begun. Peterson had set it for
District Attorney Jody Owens explained in an interview in his office on July 8 that Hinds County needs more resources to reduce the time detainees spend in Hinds County Detention Centers before going to trial.
at a basketball game at Raymond High School in November 2018. The courtappointed defense attorney filed a motion to dismiss the charges for due-process violation on April 11, 2019, because of the lack of trial since Mosley’s Nov. 16, 2018, arrest at age 19. Green reduced his bond to $5,000, and officials released him from jail on May 23, 2019. The Mississippi constitution says trials should occur within 270 days of postindictment arraignment. Uslegal.com said that the 270-day rule grants an accused person a statutory right to a speedy trial. The indictment for assaulting an officer came a year after the alleged act, on Dec. 12, 2019, with Judge Peterson issuing
an apartment complex at 1101 Highway 467 in Edwards, Miss. Court documents revealed Mosley’s alleged additional offenses in jail. On Oct. 9, 2020, in the Hinds County Detention Center in Raymond, Mosley allegedly “snatched Deputy Martravious Elkins’ “less-lethal shotgun inside A Pod Unit-(1) in the facility.” On Jan 10, 2021, he allegedly “kicked the cell dirt windows of C pod unit 4 repeatedly until it shattered.” On Feb 11, 2021, Mosley allegedly sprayed pepper spray on detention officer Marcus Wilson. The investigator, Martravious Elkins, said Mosley refused to speak with him about spraying the officer. Based on available records, Mosley
was in jail from November 2018 to May 2019 and from January 2020 to April 2021, totaling two years without going to trial on any charge. Hinds County Detention Numbers Fifty-eight people in Hinds County Detention Centers by July 2, 2021, had spent more than two years there, documents the Jackson Free Press obtained show. The facilities hold 521 detainees at that time. Renewed concerns about the length of time pre-trial detainees spend at the Hinds County Detention Center and the Work Center, both in Raymond, surfaced after county officials found Mosley hanging in his cell in April after being locked up for 16 months. On July 6, another detainee, Johnny Woodrow Gann, 33, was also found hanging in his cell, the second this year. Hinds County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Tyree Jones said in a July 12 interview that Gann had been indicted for burglary and was a convicted felon in possession of a firearm. He had been in jail since March. Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens talked in a July 8 interview about the different innovations his office has tried since his election in 2019, but he added that the volume of crime in recent times is a significant issue in how long the accused stay in detention without a trial. “Realistically, we know the intake of crime in 2019 and 2020, and still what we’re seeing in 2021, the current system is not yet equipped to handle the volume of crime we have with the few judges we have,” Owens said. He ran as a “decarceral” prosecutor, meaning he pledged to free more people accused of non-violent crimes on the way to reforming the county’s criminal-justice system, or help track them into alternative programs. Decreasing the pre-trial backlog in the county detention centers was a campaign point for candidates for both sheriff and DA in the 2019 elections, including late Sheriff Lee Vance and Owens,
